High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Continuous Aerobic Training (CAT) are prominent exercise modalities that significantly impact aging, particularly in older adults. Understanding their differences and implications is crucial for developing effective exercise regimens aimed at enhancing longevity and quality of life in this demographic. Older adults are at a higher risk of falls, which can prove to be potentially disastrous for maintaining independence. Exercise improves strength and flexibility, which also help improve balance and coordination, reducing the risk of falls. Seniors take much longer to recover from falls, so anything that helps avoid them in the first place is critical. Exercise activated pathways in muscle capable of contributing to improved metabolic control in T2D.
The growing body of research underscores HIIT’s promise to empower older adults to maintain their physical and cognitive vitality, ultimately enhancing their quality of life and independence. These findings highlight HIIT as a valuable tool for promoting healthy aging and overall wellbeing in the aging population (Keating et al., 2022). Current limitations in understanding how CAT affects aging include the need for further research to determine the primary determinants of the BDNF response to aerobic training in seniors (Enette et al., 2017). Aerobic exercise can mitigate the physiological effects of aging and enhance active life expectancy by reducing the risk of chronic diseases and disabilities (Lazzer et al., 2018).
Integrative hallmarks
- With the studies that had information on frequency of vigorous (A) and less vigorous exercise (B), respectively].
- The benefits are mainly related to exercise improving blood glucose levels through both a reduction of peripheral insulin resistance [151–153] and its capacity to induce insulin-independent glucose uptake [154].
- Countless studies suggest a lower risk of dementia for physically active individuals, regardless of when you begin a routine.
- Regular physical activity can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
- Recent studies have demonstrated that HIIT significantly improves insulin sensitivity and reduces fasting glucose levels in elderly participants.
- Additionally, HIIT has been found to be a safe and effective training method for seniors, leading to improvements in cardiovascular, pulmonary, hemodynamic, lipid, muscle, and cognitive functions (Gomez Piqueras and Sanchez Gonzalez, 2019).
Indeed, physical activity promotion has been a key focus of public health policies particularly in high income countries [33]. Several community-based and web-based interventions have been developed to promote physical activity and prevent loss of functional ability in older people [25, 34,35,36,37,38,39,40]. However, effectiveness of physical activity interventions might be uncertain given short follow-up periods and highly selected populations in most trials [41]. Future research may assess long-term effects of physical activity interventions and identify barriers to maintain activity levels and reduce sedentary lifestyle in older age. Research consistently highlights the profound impact of regular physical activity on various dimensions of wellbeing in later life. By engaging in regular exercise, older adults can maintain physical fitness and prevent age-related decline, bolster cognitive function, promote social interaction, and enhance emotional resilience.
Signaling pathways through which exercise mediates anti-aging effects
Maintaining strong social ties is important for aging adults to feel a sense of purpose and avoid feelings of loneliness or depression. Above all, the key is to find a form of exercise you love, and it will never feel like a chore again. PGC-1α is a critical regulator of gene transcription that controls energy homeostasis and is involved in mitochondrial biology [121]. In mouse skeletal muscle cells, PGC-1α mediates the conversion of IIb fibers into mitochondria-rich type IIa and I fibers [122].
Resistance Training Exercises
General loss of histones, imbalanced histone modifications, transcriptional deregulations, changes in heterochromatin, breakdown of nuclear lamina, as well as DNA and histone methylation, are characteristics of aging [69]. Within the peripheral nervous system, neuromuscular junctions modify their structure with age. These changes are characterized by axonal swellings, sprouting, synaptic detachment, partial or complete withdrawal of madmuscles app review axons from some postsynaptic sites and fragmentation of the postsynaptic specialization. However, one month of voluntary exercise in 22-mo-old mice reversed age-related synaptic changes with no change on motor neuron number or muscle fiber turnover [57].
Benefits of Exercise for Seniors and Aging Adults
Amongst older adults with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction, exercise training is the most effective intervention to improve functional outcomes. In a mouse model of this disease, RNASeq of explanted hearts showed that exercise reversed age-related pathways such as those that correlated with cell cycle [34]. Exercise is known to be an effective lifestyle intervention for T2D since it improves metabolic control. However, to consider the effects of exercise from a cellular aging point of view is a conceptual change in how physical activity is envisioned as a therapeutic tool for diabetes. Epigenetic aging refers to changes in the body’s DNA that reflect how quickly a person is aging at the molecular level.
Exercise enhances telomere length and reduces the expression of apoptosis regulators (such as cell cycle checkpoint kinase 2, p16INK4a, and P53) shedding light on the beneficial impact of exercise on senescence [68]. The beneficial effects of exercise upon glucose metabolism are well known and have been thoroughly studied [61], converting increase physical activity in one of the pillars of the treatment of T2D. The human body reacts to an acute bout of exercise by decreasing insulin secretion and increasing circulating glucagon, leading to improved insulin sensitivity and decreased glycosylated hemoglobin [62]. However, exercise as an antiaging strategy in the context of T2D is novel and could add to its known beneficial metabolic effects. The authors call for further research to understand why some individuals respond more strongly to exercise than others and how different types of training influence aging in various organs.
Given the strength of large sample sizes, we identified various types of healthy ageing trajectories in the study population and examined their relationships with different levels of physical activity. Pancreatic β-cells, which play a crucial role in the development of T2D, have also been shown to undergo cellular senescence in the setting of insulin resistance [145], T2D and high body mass index (BMI). Senolysis (the specific removal of senescence cells either pharmacologically or through transgenic models) improved insulin secretion, blood glucose levels and the gene identity of the remaining β-cell population [13]. Muscle is another tissue impacted by accelerated aging during diabetes as evidenced by accelerated loss of strength and mitochondrial dysfunction in T1D [14, 15]. Skin biopsies obtained from subjects of different ages demonstrated that the onset of cellular senescence occurred earlier in people with juvenile diabetes and in subjects genetically predisposed to diabetes [144]. Additionally, premature senescence has been observed in endothelial colony-forming cells in the cord blood of infants from mothers with diabetes [146].
The Importance of Physical Activity Exercise among Older People
Although PGC-1α mediated conversion has not been directly shown across species, type IIa fibers in humans have the highest concentration of PGC-1a [123, 124], which could support a parallel mechanism. In addition, PGC-1α activation by AMPK has shown to act as a regulator of human telomere transcription via telomeric repeat-containing RNA (TERRA), important for telomere integrity [125]. Age is characterized by the accumulation of lesions in the DNA and defects in the nuclear architecture leading to genomic instability.
Figures
Studies have demonstrated that HIIT can improve glycolipid metabolism in children with metabolic disorders, leading to beneficial changes in triglyceride, cholesterol, glucose, and insulin levels (Mekari et al., 2020; Men et al., 2023). Additionally, HIIT has been found to enhance liver metabolism, reduce inflammation, and improve insulin signaling pathways in type 2 diabetes mellitus mice, indicating its effectiveness in addressing lipid metabolism disorders and inflammation in the liver (Hu et al., 2023; Zheng et al., 2020). HIIT has been shown to enhance glycolipid metabolism, contributing to reductions in critical markers such as triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, and insulin levels. For elderly individuals who are at a higher risk for metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, these improvements are particularly crucial. Recent studies have demonstrated that HIIT significantly improves insulin sensitivity and reduces fasting glucose levels in elderly participants.
AMPK as a central regulator
In one study, for adults younger than 60, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. For adults 60 and older, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day. The present study comprises a set of secondary data analyses using deidentified data from primary research studies, most of which are publicly available. All primary research studies received ethics approval from their corresponding local institutional review boards. The ATHLOS project was approved by the Ethics Review Committee of Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, Spain (635316–2).
Study sample
Public health policies on physical activity promotion can play a key role in reducing burdens of disability as well as healthcare costs in ageing populations. Following Ram and Grimm indications [16], we performed a single-class model (i.e. latent growth curve model) to find the best representation of change in the overall sample (linear or quadratic change). We used the best fitting model [lower Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC)] as baseline model against which we compared subsequent models with different number of latent classes, ranging from two to five. The entropy of the model was prioritised as selection criteria in order to optimise the separation between the classes [16]. The models were estimated using maximum likelihood with errors robust to non-normality and non-independence of observations (MLR) [19], and missing data were assumed to be missing at random (MAR).
Table 1. Effects of exercise on human and animal models of aging.
Conversely, CAT, also known as steady-state or endurance training, involves sustained, moderate-intensity exercise over a longer period, such as jogging, cycling, or swimming. EVs are a family of lipid bilayer vesicles secreted by almost all cells, which contain bioactive molecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids that are involved in intercellular and inter-organ communication. Whether you join a walking group, go to group fitness classes or visit a gardening club, exercise can be made into a fun social event.